The Likely Lads was a British TV sitcom created and written by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais. Twenty episodes were broadcast by the BBC, over three series, between 1964 and 1966.
The show was set in Newcastle upon Tyne, North East England and followed the friendship of two working class men in their early 20s, Terry Collier (James Bolam) and Bob Ferris (Rodney Bewes). After growing up, going to school and the Scouts together, Bob and Terry are now working in the same factory, Ellison's Electrical, alongside the older, wiser duo of Cloughie and Jack. The show's gritty yet verbose humour derived largely from the tensions between Terry's cynical, every-man, working class personality and Bob's ambition to better himself and move to the middle class.
As Bob and Terry were two average working class lads growing up in the industrial North East, their hobbies were beer, football and girls. They were canny, which is to say street-wise, yet they stumbled into one scrape after another as they struggled to enjoy the Swinging Sixties on their meagre incomes.
After the TV show ended, sixteen of the twenty television scripts were adapted for radio by James Bolam, and broadcast in two series during 1967 and 1968. Produced by John Browell, the radio adaptations were recorded at the Paris Studios in Lower Regent Street, London using most of the original television cast. Series 1 was broadcast on the BBC Light Programme, then Series 2 on the recently launched BBC Radio 2.
Collected here are the 16 BBC Radio episodes.
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